A Transformation And A Vision! Madoka's A Girl Again!
Meanwhile, Kyousuke was standing outside the Snow-Cat's driver's door, waiting patiently for Madoka to finish shedding his clothes. He wondered nervously how the beautiful boy would look and how they'd manage to get to from the vehicle to the crater.
The door of the tall vehicle opened, and the raven-haired boy stepped out onto the steel runner covering its bulldozer-like tracks.
Kyousuke "Huh?" blew a cloud of steam from his mouth. "Why haven't you undressed, Ayukawa?"
"I already have, Kasuga-kun," said Madoka. "I just took off my undies. I'll get rid of all this just before we go into the spring."
Kyousuke swallowed nervously. "Good idea. You'd better come out so I can do the same."
Madoka lightly hopped down. Just as Kyousuke was climbing into the vehicle, he called, "Kasuga-kun?"
The esper looked back. "Hmm?"
"I can't thank you enough for doing this." The catlike eyes, dark blue now, stared up at him. "If you lose your powers... I promise, Kasuga-kun, I'll make it up to you by being your girl forever."
"Ayukawa..." Kyousuke quickly ducked into the Snow-Cat and shut the door so Madoka wouldn't see the tears forming in his eyes.
oOo
Several minutes later, the pair stood ready by Kyousuke's grandfather's side. He was still sitting at the edge of the crater, still peering into its depths, still trying to melt the frozen spring water with his Power.
"I think I almost have it," he reported. The slick surface, he saw, had acquired ripples. "When I finish heating this, you two take your clothes off and jump in."
"Jump in?" Kyousuke eyed the distance apprehensively. "Ojii-chan, are you sure the spring's deep enough?"
"I was talking figuratively, Kyousuke! Had I wanted to break your bones, I would have done so by now. It would be safer for you to use your Power."
Thus rebuffed, Kyousuke went back to stand beside Madoka.
Everyone lapsed into silence. Ojii-chan continued to heat the water until, twenty minutes later, he announced, "It's as ready as I can get it. Time, you two."
Madoka's hands went up to his coat. Kyousuke quickly turned away and began to undress himself. The polar cold bit at his skin, and he shivered. They were lucky there was no wind now, and that the temperature was warm for the Antarctic nighttime, a mere 12 degrees below freezing.
He sighed and shivered. Well, here we go, he thought to himself. Forgive me, Ayukawa. He steeled himself and turned around.
Madoka was already undressed as well, and the redness of her bishounen face must have matched the burning of Kyousuke's own as they took in each other's nakedness for the first time.
"Ayukawa," Kyousuke said, gulping, "hold on to me, please. I'm going to float us in."
The bishounen nodded, and gingerly went over to embrace Kyousuke, keeping their boots until the last moment. They both grimaced as a particularly sensitive portion of their anatomies made contact.
"Ayukawa—" Kyousuke gritted his teeth "—I don't mean to offend you or anything, but dammit, this is the first and last time I ever want to feel a naked guy against me."
Madoka's face flushed a deeper crimson. "Believe me, Kasuga-kun, I understand perfectly well how you feel."
He gasped as Kyousuke lifted them a few inches off the ground with his Power. Then they shed the last vestiges of their clothing, drifted to the side, hung for a moment over the precipice, and started down.
A few seconds later they were floating just above the steaming surface at the bottom of the hole. Kyousuke tested the spring by extending a toe downward, decided that the water was safe, and lowered them the rest of the way in.
The liquid was comfortably warm, but not hot enough to turn Ayukawa back into a girl. The pair quickly found themselves swimming, staring up at the ice walls of the pool, which glittered a winking gold in the poorly-lit darkness. The light played the off the water in unusual patterns, and for a moment Kyousuke felt himself lost, as if in another timeless reality.
"Kasuga-kun," Madoka said softly, slowly waving his hands to and fro in the eerily-lit water. "It's beautiful. I feel as though I'm all alone with you here, and we're the only people in the world."
Kyousuke nodded at him. "I feel the same way, Ayukawa."
They waited, but nothing seemed to be forthcoming, so the esper yelled, "Ojii-chan! There's nothing happening!"
"Oh, I forgot to tell you!" the old man shouted back, his head a backlit black circle hanging over the edge of the hole. "You have to kiss! It's not called the Spring of Angel's Drowned Lover for nothing, you know!"
Kyousuke snorted. "Now he tells us," he grumbled in disgust.
Madoka put a slick hand on his wet shoulder. "Kasuga-kun," he said, turning him around. "Please. I want to get this over with. I want to go back to being an ordinary girl." Without preamble he leaned forward and roughly took Kyousuke's lips in his own.
Kyousuke clasped Madoka's shoulders, feeling the warmth of the mouth pressing against his, claiming it. All alone with you... and we're the only people in the world... Every nerve in him was alive: he could feel everything, from the liquid heat of the water, to Madoka's skin rubbing against his, the hands on his shoulders, their thighs pressing against each other...
Suddenly he began to feel an electric tingle surging through his body, and instinctively knew that the spring was doing its work. He broke off from Madoka to shout out what was happening to his grandfather, but the bishounen hungrily sought after his lips and kissed them again, preventing him from speaking.
Ayukawa... Suddenly the surroundings were lit up in a blinding white light, and for a moment Kyousuke thought he heard the strains of a sweet, sad choral music wafting through the air. He closed his eyes, and tried to listen more to the sound. Failing to discern it any more, he opened his eyes and looked into the blinding light.
oOo
Somehow they were no longer in the water, no longer swimmingindeed, no longer in their own time or in their own world. Kyousuke watched as a green park he recognized as one near Ayukawa's home began to coalesce about them. They were still naked, still touching each other, but that scarcely seemed to matter now. As the momentsdays? Centuries?passed, he realized that the people walking around in the area didn't notice them at all.
A misty white form detached itself from Madoka's bishounen body and enveloped the anxious esper. He felt a momentary chill, and something pressed insistently against his mind, invading his thoughts.
Thank you for freeing me, said a gentle male voice. I am forever grateful to you. As my thanks, witness a future of yours that may come to pass... The weight fell from Kyousuke's mind, the white mist evaporated, and the park solidified around them.
"Mama!" called a little pigtailed girl in a red jumper as she ran through Kyousuke's immaterial body to a woman seated on a bench some distance away. The woman had long black hair underneath a red straw hat and wore a simple brown dress and sandals, and was reading a book.
The woman's head popped up. "Na-chan!" she exclaimed. "Where's your father?"
"Ayukawa!" said Kyousuke, raising his eyebrows in surprise. "That's you!"
"So I noticed, Kasuga-kun." Madoka was a girl again, but that didn't surprise Kyousuke anymore. It seemed like a foreordained part of things.
"You're so beautiful..." he breathed, entranced at the vision. Madoka smiled and kissed him, then went back to watching the scene.
The little girl hopped onto the bench beside her mother. "I left him looking for me in the playground," she giggled. " I used the Power to get back here."
"You naughty girl!" the older Madoka said, lifting her daughter onto her lap. "Didn't I tell you not to use the Power in public?"
"But Mama, no one saw me, and Auntie Kurumi uses it all the time anyway, so I"
"There you are!" exclaimed a male voice. Madoka twisted around in Kyousuke's grasp upon hearing it.
"Oh, my..." she breathed. "You don't look so bad yourself, Kasuga-kun."
The young esper turned around and saw himself. Older, taller, but with roughly the same hairstyle, and with a devilishly mischievous look on his face.
"Na-chan," the older Kyousuke said, walking up to the mother and daughter pair. "You didn't think I'd feel you leaving the playground, did you?"
The little girl shrieked happily and embraced her mother, hiding her face in Madoka's bosom. "I'm sorry, Papa! Don't send me to the Underworld, please!"
"Underworld?" Madoka's brow furrowed. "Kyousuke? Just what have you been telling your daughter?"
"I'm sorry, Madoka." The man sat down beside the older Ayukawa. "I was just teasing her." He reached out and stroked his daughter's hair. "Don't worry, Na-chan, I won't send you to the Underworld. I was just joking."
The little girl peeked out from her mother's chest. "Really, Papa?"
"Really."
The little girl laughed in glee. "That was fun, Papa! Let's do it again!" As she transferred herself into her father's arms, the world around the young Kyousuke and Madoka began to fade away, until they found themselves once more treading the brightly-lit pool at the bottom of the world.
"Kasuga-kun..." whispered Madoka, resting her head on his shoulder. "I wonder if that will ever come true."
"I certainly hope it will... Madoka." Kyousuke blushed as he felt the softness of her breasts against his chest, the femininity rubbing against his thighs, and wished, as they swam in the water of unknown origin, lit up as if by a supernova, that the moment would never end.
"There's just one thing I hate about it," Madoka announced, pulling her head back to look at him.
"Eh?"
"I never got to hear my daughter's name. Na-chan... Natsuko? Nagasi? Nanako? Natsumi? Or maybe..."
Suddenly the raven-haired girl seemed to sway in Kyousuke's grip. "Kasuga-kun... I'm not feeling so great," she mumbled, blinking at him with eyes shining like many-faceted emeralds in the fulgent glow. "I feel weak..." Her head started to loll backward.
Alarmed, Kyousuke held her tighter. "Why? What's wrong? Ayukawa, tell me!"
"The spring, Kasuga-kun..." Feeling her strength somehow ebbing away, Madoka reached out with a strength fueled by her desperation, put a hand round Kyousuke's head, pulled him to her, and kissed him.
"Kasuga-kun, I love you..."
Kyousuke felt her grip relax. Her hands went limp and slid into the water with little burbles. Her face, eyes closed and lips silent and still, fell away from his. He hugged her more tightly to him to keep her from slipping into the water, acutely aware that her legs had become motionless as well.
"Ayukawa!" Kyousuke's scream of terror echoed off the crystalline walls of the spring. He thrashed around. "Ayukawa! Ojii-chan! Help us!"
The light grew even brighter, wiping out Kyousuke's vision entirely. He had the sensation of something soft but heavy slamming into his mind, and the world faded into a blank whiteness.
